In the USA, Vice President Dick Cheney‘s ex aide, ‘Scooter’ Libby, is guilty, the jury in his trial about the lies which started the Iraq war, says.
See also here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
Pardon for Libby? Here.
Libby jokes: here.
Libby cartoons: here.
Timeline: here.
US trade union federation AFL-CIO: end military involvement in Iraq.
From LiveScience:
The Secret Language of Whales Revealed
By Abigail W. Leonard
posted: 06 March 2007
Deep below the ocean’s surface, blue whales are singing—and for the first time, scientists think they know why.
Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recorded the sounds and say they offer new insight into the behavior of the passenger jet-sized animals.
* Video: Starving Whales
* Audio: Hear Whales Sing
See also here.
Antarctic blue whale video: here.
Decline of Antarctic blue whale led to paradoxical fall in krill: here.
Bryde’s whales in New Zealand: here.
From British daily The Daily Mail:
Blair left ‘delusional’ by war in Iraq
by JANE MERRICK
Tony Blair was left a “delusional” and emotional wreck by the Iraq war, a documentary will reveal.
A string of former Cabinet Ministers questioned his mental health four years on from the invasion which has cost the lives of 133 British soldiers and daily bloodshed on the streets of Iraq.
Former International Development Secretary Clare Short, a long-standing critic of the Prime Minister, described Mr Blair as “delusional” for believing that everyday life in Baghdad and Basra had been improved by the war.
But even Mr Blair’s allies, Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett, cast doubt over whether the Premier had coped with the strain of sending British troops to war.
Mr Blunkett said the Prime Minister was “destroying himself physically and emotionally” in the aftermath of the war because critics had questioned his decision.
The claims are made in the third and final part of Blair: The Inside Story, by respected documentary maker Michael Cockerell.
Entitled The End of The Affair, it shows how public confidence in the Premier plummeted after the 2003 Iraq invasion, the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly and over his close relationship with President George Bush.
Maybe, some mental illnesses are contagious trans-Atlantically?
Death penalty for Iraqi women? See here.
From daily The Age in Australia:
Blogging sounds death knell for diaries
March 6, 2007 – 2:24PM
Anne Frank, Samuel Pepys and Arctic explorer Captain Scott all lived on through their diaries, but new research suggests the art of diary-keeping is a dying art due to the power of internet blogging.
A survey of 1,000 British teenagers shows that fewer than one in 10 young people take the time to write a traditional diary, compared with 47 per cent who share their innermost thoughts by blogging online.
Blogs – short for web logs – are personal websites where people publish their diaries or thoughts, talk about current affairs or link to other stories or pictures on the internet.
Roger Morrice’s 17th century English diary: here.
From British daily The Independent:
Goldsmith fails to gag new cash-for-honours story
Published: 06 March 2007
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith failed in a legal bid to stop publication today of fresh information surrounding the cash-for-honours investigation.
A judge refused to grant an injunction to stop The Guardian printing a story suggesting Lord Levy may have attempted to influence the evidence of senior Downing Street aide Ruth Turner.
Lord Goldsmith secured an injunction on Friday blocking the BBC from running a news item which the police had said could “impede their inquiries”.
Its terms were later relaxed to allow the BBC to report that Ms Turner was the author of the document and that it concerned Tony Blair’s chief fund raiser.
But The Guardian went further today, suggesting detectives were examining whether Lord Levy had attempted to “shape” her evidence to the inquiry.
This video is called Lake Bunyoni Uganda.
From BirdLife:
Uganda weighs up value of its forest reserves
06-03-2007
NatureUganda (BirdLife in Uganda) are among a number of organisations putting forward their defence to the Ugandan government over the apparent ‘give-away’ of forest reserves for large-scale production of sugarcane and palm oil.
The events follow months of speculation surrounding the government’s attempts to push for forest ‘give-aways’ in the country, whereby government licenses allow private companies to convert gazetted forest reserves for intensive agricultural use.
“Losing these forests, particularly the Mabira Forest Reserve, would have enormous repercussions for both people and wildlife in Uganda.” said Achilles Byaruhanga, Executive Director of NatureUganda (BirdLife in Uganda).
“As a result, we are working hard to ensure the government understands that holding onto these sites is of utmost importance, both in terms of conserving biodiversity and in terms of poverty reduction and economic growth.”
Mabira Forest Reserve is listed by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA).
The forest contains over 300 species of bird, including the Endangered Nahan’s Francolin Francolinus nahani.
The forest also supports nine species of primate, a recently identified new mangabey subspecies in Uganda, Lophocebus albigena johnstoni and a new species of Short-tailed Fruit Bat.
“The fact that we are still discovering new species of large animals in this forest is a pointer to its value for biodiversity.” commented Byaruhanga.
“The forest also serves as catchment for many of the region’s rivers, providing freshwater for over one million people before joining the Nile.”
Echuya Central Forest Reserve in Uganda: here.
This video from the USA is called: Seymour Hersh on planned invasion of Iran.
From daily The Guardian in Britain:
Iran’s rich architecture and rare treasures threatened by possible US strikes
· Many ancient remains are close to nuclear plants
· Archaeologists anxious to avoid repeat of Iraq chaosMonday March 5, 2007
In his quiet office at the British Museum, among the portraits of long-dead explorers and copies of 3,000-year-old inscriptions, one of the greatest experts on the archaeology of the Middle East has a series of maps of Iranian nuclear installations spread out across his desk.
John Curtis’s maps fill him with foreboding: because they show how many of Iran’s nuclear plants are perilously close to ancient cultural sites.
Natanz, home to a uranium enrichment plant, is renowned for its exquisite ceramics; Isfahan, home to a uranium conversion plant, is also a Unesco world heritage site and was regarded in the 16th century as the most beautiful city on earth. …
Four years ago Dr Curtis was warning that war in Iraq would be a disaster for some of the oldest and most important sites in the world.
He has since seen his worst fears confirmed: the site of ancient Babylon became an American military base; thousands of objects are missing from the national museum at Baghdad; and looted artefacts have been illicitly excavated and smuggled out of the country.
Now Dr Curtis dreads seeing history repeated, this time through the escalating threat from the United States against Iran.
Fears of US-Iran war, and Azerbajian and Turkey: here.
By Patrick Martin:
Wall Street drools over prospect of capturing Iraq oil wealth
6 March 2007
The Iraqi cabinet’s adoption last week of a law creating the legal framework for turning over the country’s oil wealth to American corporations has touched off a chorus of salutes from the Bush administration, congressional Democrats and the corporate-controlled American media.
Perhaps the crassest expression of money-grubbing glee came in the Wall Street Journal, which published an article March 4 celebrating the unlocking of untold riches, including “dozens of untouched oil fields loaded with proven reserves and scores of exploration blocks that may prove a magnet to international oil companies.”
The draft law lists 51 oil fields, 27 in production and the balance with proven reserves, as well as 65 exploration blocks.
The fallow fields and exploration blocks are located in every region of the country, while the working fields are concentrated in the northern region around Kirkuk and in the southern region near the border with Kuwait.
Citing a cabinet document, the Journal reported that “Iraqi officials must first agree to the framework of contracts to be used when negotiating with foreign oil companies by March 15 if the country’s draft hydrocarbons law is to be submitted to parliament for its approval.”
The draft law calls for reviewing and renegotiating contracts with Russian, French and Chinese oil producers, signed under Saddam Hussein.
These countries, which initially opposed the US invasion, are expected to be cut out of any lucrative oil deals in favor of American and British companies.
Anyone still wondering why the Wall Street Journal is so often called the War Street Journal?
This video says about itself:
The Death of Marat, by Jacques-Louis David. Music – Dante’s Prayer by Loreena McKennitt.
From London daily The Morning Star:
Don’t mention the revolution
(Monday 05 March 2007)
EXHIBITION: Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830
Royal Academy, London
CHRISTINE LINDEY finds gaping holes in a Royal Academy exhibition that’s supposed to be about citizens and kings during the French Revolution.
The publicity for the Royal Academy’s exhibition shows a detail of Jacques-Louis David‘s Marat murdered in his bath.
But beware. If you want to see this most moving homage to the martyr of the French Revolution, you will have to go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.
As soon as I saw it, I knew that something was wrong. This is a lifeless studio copy.
You have to look at the small print to find out. The selection and interpretation of works is equally misleading.
The exhibition begins well.
Of nine themes, the first focuses on giant state portraits.
Swathed in silks, furs, sashes and jewels, ancien regime kings and queens clutch absurd spectres or globes signifying their divine right to rule.
They look down at you with such pompous disdain that you eagerly anticipate seeing portraits of the revolutionaries who toppled them.
But no. The second room greets you with The Status Portrait: Before, During and after the Revolution.
Nodding references to political activists are made with portraits of George Washington, Samuel Adams and the French republican [rather: constitutional monarchist] Mirabeau, but most of the portraits here, including all of the women, are of the titled.
Joshua Reynolds’s Mary, Countess of Bute walks her dog, yet we see no portrait of Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen and founder of the working class Society of Revolutionary Republican Women.
It gets worse. Room three, The Cultural Portrait, manages to deal with “the various manifestations of the Enlightenment” without including portraits of the world-shaking intellectuals Thomas Paine [see also here] and Mary Wollstonecraft [see also here, and here].
Yet it finds room for the obscure, such as Francois Tronchin “a banker and collector … man of taste and discrimination.” This section completely excludes women.
By room four, all thought of revolution evaporates and the theme is The Artist: Image and Self-Image.
Moreover, this is defined in so conservative a way that neither the celebrated portraitist Vigee-Lebrun nor the equally well-known Angelica Kauffmann, founder-member of the Royal Academy, appears.
Indeed, Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot is the only woman artist here.
The studio version of David’s Marat is slipped into room five, The Portrait After the Antique, which is mostly populated by marble busts in the antique manner.
After this, we get a celebration of family life, followed by a look at the allegorical portrait.
The latter, at least, includes depictions of successful professional women including Vigee-Lebrun’s lively portrait of Madame de Stael and Houdon’s sensuously carved bust of the singer Sophie Arnould.
Nature and Grace: The Figure in the Landscape in room eight introduces us to portraits of the rich discovering pleasing vistas or other wonders of tamed nature.
With a cosy sigh of relief, the final room announces the restoration of the monarchy in 1815 and, with it, the consolidation of bourgeois power.
Of course, commissioned portraiture by its nature was and still is mostly the province of the rich.
But where are the prints of revolutionary heroes such as Marat, Olympe de Gouges, Tom Paine and others which were widely used as a means of popularising republicanism?
Where are the prints of the working-class sans culottes and the American foot soldiers who made the two revolutions?
You will have to look very closely to find a cockade or a phrygian cap here.
Moreover, most of the women portrayed are defined only in terms of their relationship to men as wives, mothers or widows.
In the 1960s, Frenchman Regis Debray wrote a book, Revolution within the revolution.
Now, this exhibition, sponsored by British Conservative daily The Daily Telegraph, also known as The Daily Torygraph, seems to have discovered the secret of Revolution without a revolution …
A review of Danton’s Death by Georg Büchner in a new version by Howard Brenton at the National Theatre in London, directed by Michael Grandage: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 